Something Yet Unknown

As I sit again at my desk, it is light today. The room is full of light. Enough light that I can see the thick layer of dust on my keyboard. Dust. My sign that I’m not living my dream. Writing is my dream. Having this art in my life gives it meaning, expression, buoyancy. So why is dust on my keyboard? For the same reason that I am not having daily sex or even thinking about it I suppose.

Prozac. Prozac is the great equalizer. There’s no deep joy, and no great sorrow. The very things that breed passion and even compassion. I am fairly numb. It’s not that I never feel, it’s that I never feel to the core of being for long enough to form an opinion that becomes art. I live utterly in the moment and each moment passes quickly by. I don’t hold on to it at all. I don’t even need to really. Except that if I don’t, I do not write either. How did writing become such a part of feeling for me? Why did it become a part of feeling?

I will leave that for a bit…I need to let the question sit and talk about my reality. I am on Prozac, not because I’m unhappy and need a biological crutch. I’m not on it because I need therapy to correct some misalignment of behavior or belief. I’m on it because I don’t have a thyroid and my brain isn’t getting what it needs. Not enough at least. And that bit I do get of what my brain needs is so tenuously placed that the light of day effects it utterly. A cloudy day makes me sleepy. A winter makes me sleep.

I don’t have a thyroid because I have thyroid cancer and giving me just a bit of thyroid hormone will keep me alive, but giving me all I need will keep the cancer alive. So…prozac and living utterly in the moment, gliding through each moment without the profound joyfulness I’ve come to love and need, but cannot have at present. Oh the lack of thyroid hormone replacement is working on the cancer. It hasn’t grown. It hasn’t spread. It is doing nothing, just as I’d like. I am grateful for that. I expect to live a long, very naturally lived life. I can expect that, because for my kinds of cancers, it’s luckily true. And except for the prozac stuff, I’m loving my life and living it happy.

This was the third winter without my thyroid. It was the worst so far. Slowly, slowly the resilience that forced me from bed, despite however sleepy I felt, to do something, anything, has ebbed. This winter, I felt I hibernated in truth. Now spring is bringing more light than clouds and I’m feeling more awake, more myself. But there’s still prozac, the great equalizer. And the moments continue unfolding without record here or anywhere. Without the ideas melding into some great life of their own that I can participate in and share with anyone else. No mundane thought, no inspired thought either to give birth to something more than just me. That’s what my art is to me. This writing art.

It’s what sex is for me too. It inspires me, makes me ever so joyful. And that too is quiet, so quiet. It’s not that I never have any sex, or that I can’t enjoy it if I do, its that it doesn’t reach the core of being for long enough to be expressed fully either. Like my writing, I am silent and still with sex too.

So how can I unhitch these expressions of joy from the Prozac? They have always burned brightly inside me. They have always demanded expression. When they don’t burn in me, I don’t do anything with them of my own volition. At least not until now. I think I must though. I have to find some method that draws me along into expression that doesn’t have to burn to be graven. Perhaps it’s as simple as habit. As simple as choosing it. It’s not like I can’t do it. Once I do it, I smile. I am glad for it, thankful for it, happy for it. Once these expressions begin, they build to something more passionate that lingers in me. I am realizing that ever so slowly.

By now, you just know that at least some of these keys have had much of the dust brushed away. And the same is true of my heart. I am thankful. I want to keep the dust away…

The other day, Remus asked me for a blow job. I could see myself doing it. I could feel the love in it, the passion for it rise in me, but I didn’t move. My body felt so heavy, I just couldn’t move it. The moment passed for him, but I could feel his loneliness for me, for the passion I contain, but do not express very much these days. I feel loneliness for my passion too. I feel loneliness for my friends whom I don’t have the energy to pursue too. That passion is the source of giving for me. It is the source of my submission to him. It is easy to express dominance and sadism in this state. Doing so makes me happy and joyful even, but it’s not the depths of me. It is even easy to express compassion, but it is not easy to simply give and serve and be inspired. I have to work for it. Once I do, it builds in me, but it cannot be demanded or pressured. It must be chosen and coaxed a little. It has to be coaxed only with joy. Chosen with joy and mindfulness and spirit. I don’t quite know what that means or how it works yet. But I so want to discover it.

William Shakespeare

Walt Whitman

Contributors

Get Sexy and Soulful

A candid and poetic discourse about Remus and Shannee. We are in our 50's. Our children are grown and now we are focused on building a life that pleases ourselves. This includes making friends, doing work that satisfies and traveling as often as we can. Shannee has been writing and publishing poetry since 2006 under various guises; even her real name.